


No roots

by Unbreakable_Vow



Series: FB into the Potterverse [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, POV Eileen Prince, POV Queenie Goldstein, POV Severus Snape, can be read as a stand alone story, omniscent author, tobias snape's story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24183472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbreakable_Vow/pseuds/Unbreakable_Vow
Summary: Family defines you, but what else does when you don’t have a family?Tobias Snape's story.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Credence Barebone & Queenie Goldstein, Eileen Prince/Tobias Snape, Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski, mentioned
Series: FB into the Potterverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721911
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22
Collections: HP UnHappily Ever After Fest 2020





	No roots

**Author's Note:**

> I... I don't even know. Don't ask. Just a strange idea I had in passing that I needed to put into words.  
> It can be read as a stand alone, but it fitted well with this verse so I've put the story here
> 
> English is not my first language, so please forgive any mistakes

Tobias Snape, her fiancéé, is many things: quick-tempered, stubborn, self-righteous and too much fond of whiskey. Sometimes, when she’s feeling particularly generous, Eileen thinks that it couldn’t be otherwise: he’s been an orphan all this life, going from a foster family to another since he was born, with no one telling him what was wrong and what right, what too much and what too little.

 _Family defines you, but what else does when you don’t have a family?_ she thinks, and it helps her forgives him when he goes a bit too much off the hook. Because Tobias is also fragile, sad, lonely, and so hungry for affection that it takes her breath away everytime he does or says something that shows how little love he’s ever known in his life.

(“I’ve invented my own name, there and there” he tells her one day, “because my first family used to tell me that I was a snake, and I remembered a snake named Tobias in a documentary. The public official stood here, behind his desk, looking at me like I’d grown a second head or something. I think I was… five, maybe? I’ve had two families already by that point, and no one had bothered to give me a name.”)

 _What kind of mother would leave a baby barely born to fend for himself?_ she often asks herself, seeing his lover struggling with sweet words, with kind gestures, with little smiles. He’s a man who has known only misery, pain and anger; a muggle who has tried to survive at the end of every turn without a family to help him get going.

But _magic_ happens around him, whatever he’s aware of it or not.

***

Severus takes to Legilimency as he does walking and reading: as easy as he was born for it.

Eileen hadn’t really tried to teach him, not actively at least. It had been a whim on her part, let him know everything that there’s to know about her world without actively using magic. Arithmancy, History of Magic, the theory behind Potion: she had teached him in secret, far from his father’s eyes, and Severus has taken everything in stride, excelling in all her favorite subject like the brilliant boy she knows he is.

But his skills at Legilimency speak of a prodigy. She’s skilled herself - every pureblood child has received an education in it - but her son is going to beat her before he even reaches four years, with how he’s already reading everyone’s thoughts, even from stranger on the street.

She tries to see if there was a natural Legilimens in her family, going back many generations, but she doesn’t find anything, and in the end she just gives up. She urges him to practice and practice, to nurten his natural talent even more once he goes to Hogwarts.

She never once thinks that her son’s talent could come from his father’s side. It’s always like that for magical child born from mixed parents: you try to trace their magical abilities on their magical parent’s side, going so far as to speculate unlikely affairs or secret marriages between members of other families, and never think about the muggle parent, even one whose family has always been unknown.

Because even the most pro-muggle wizards, even unconsciously, thinks that the only thing a muggle parent can give to their magical child is the risk of being born a squib.

***

When Queenie finds out that she’s pregnant, her whole world crumples.

She’s been Grindelwald’s right hand for thirteen years, and has seen and done more things that she’s capable of forgiving herself for. Regret is something that she’s used to by now, but she goes on knowing that everything she does will be for the greater good of a world in which no-maj and wizards will live in peace, free to love and to marry whoever they want.

She’s been told many times by Jacob that she’s just deluding herself, that war never solves everything, and that her leader wants to kill no-maj, not to leave with them in peace. Queenie knows that some of what Jacob says is true - Grindelwald is a great Occlumens, but nothing helps against a natural Legilimens - and that Grindelwald feels no more than contempt for no-majs. But she also knows that, more than everything else, Grindelwald _knows_ of love - his heart aches for Albus Dumbledore constantly, his desperation to be with him something that, at times, doesn’t let her sleep at night - and he would never let her experience the same heartbreak that haunts his heart.

That’s why he lets her get away with seeing Jacob: she’s sure that he knows, even if she’s always extra careful to not be discovered, and that he pretends to turn a blind eye.

Because even being at the opposite side of a war, Queenie and Jacob had never stopping loving each other - and doesn’t it prove her point? No one should prevent a love like the one they have - and they always confirm their love in those secret meetings she craves. But Queenie had never suspected that one of this encounter would result in this.

  
  


***

Once, in his first year of teaching, Dumbledore asks him when he learned Legilimency. “I’ve noticed that even my defenses are not strong enough against you,” he says after the question, “and that has happened only with one person before.”

(Severus senses _something_ behind that sentence, and has to abide his curiosity before he does something as foolish as ask who this person is. They may be on the same side now, but he doesn’t trust Dumbledore, not after having failed his promise to protect Lily.)

“It’s something that I’ve always been good at,” he answers. “My mother teached me when I was young.”

“Ah, yes, there is still this tradition in some families. I hope that traditions like this one will soon be forgotten in our world.”

Severus nods, but in truth he disagrees completely. What Dumbledore fails to see, and what many member of the Order do, is how much pride should be taken in traditions like this one: traditions that don’t rely on blood superiority, that are exquisitely _magical_ , and that any magical children should try.

But they sees traditions and thinks or Dark Lords, of whispers of _mudblood_ in the corridors - will it ever stop bleeding, the wound that his worst memory has inflicted in is heart? - and of enemies to destroy. Worst of all, they see _Slytherin_ and think of bad people, of someone who can be left behind and bullied and treated cruelly because they can give as much as they get, if not worst, and the best defense is a good offense.

Talk about a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Personally, Severus thinks that it’s this attitude that had put many people on the Dark Lord’ side, more than his stupid propaganda against the muggleborn.

***

In the end, she decides to abandon her child.

It’s not an easy decision, and she cries many nights for it. But she knows that in Nurmengard his child would never been safe, no matter how well protected her home - for that’s how by now she considers that place as - is. She can’t let a child grow in the center of the war, when every day could be her last, and with his father so far away from him.

She debates with herself with the idea of giving the child to Jacob, but she knows that in his eyes her abandoning their child, even to him, would mean kill the love he feels for her. In his mind a parent should never leave their children (she still remembers him talking about his family, how close they were when they left Poland for the United States, how he’s always wanted a family as big as his was) and he wouldn’t understand the impossible situation she’s in now, the horrible choice she must take if she wants her child to live in a free world.

She only trusts Aurelius with the knowledge of her pregnancy - Aurelius, her _Relì,_ who’s become like a little brother to her - and he’s the one to suggest leaving the child in a family in England, when the war, if it will ever come, will come for last.

“Grindelwald never mentions England. One would think he’s never heard of it, except for my brother,” he says, and they both know there’s more than that - but Aurelius doesn’t know much, she knows that, even if she reads in his mind the burning curiosity for it.

***

The day Tobias dies, Eileen feels an enormous sadness and, truthfully, relief.

She’d always known the truth about the violent nature of Tobias, and a part of her still thinks that, because of that, she deserved everything he did to her and to Severus. But the logical part of her - the one that’s been lost since her own family disowned her, since Tobias hit her the first time - knows that no one deserves to be abused, not her and, she adds in her mind with a pang of pain, not him.

Magic had been the last strawn in his already fragile mind. For someone who’s been always surrounded by it, he’d taken the news as bad as any pureblood would have guessed: with pure hate. He’d refused to listen to her, started to beat her (and she remembers vidly how she’d been pregnant, and how she’d feared for their child when he kicked her stomach over and over again) and decided to stay only in the hope to find, in her, the family’s never had.

And it’s stupid, and she really hates herself for this, but she still loves him. Even now, after all those years of pain, seeing his coffin being lied in the ground makes her cry. Severus is disgusted by her, she knows, but he can’t understand. He’s never met the Tobias she knew, the complicated and beautiful men who carried so many wounds that she’s lost herself try to cure all of them.

 _I’ll always regret choosing him,_ she thinks now, but she understand all too well the woman who choose him: even now, if she could turn back, she isn’t sure she would make the right choice. 

***

Of course, once she’s decided to that course of action, there’s the matter of maintaining the pregnancy a secret, a not so simple task since she’s always in the middle of the action.

Concealing charms are easy enough to perform, but there’s no way to hide nausea, tiredness, soreness and mood swings from the others. It becomes so much that even Grindelwald notices, once, and goes personally to ask here if she’s alright - and that’s what she’s never able to explain to Jacob, how much he actually _cares_ for them, the witches and wizards who choose to follow him, and _thoughts_ of concern and care and not something that can be buffled - and if she wants to take some time off in Nurmengard. She gladly accepts, since she’s entering the last month of her pregnancy, and doesn’t want to risk more than she already has.

Aurelius helps her deliver her baby - and she will never forget it, not until the day she dies, and will never stop mourn her little brother - and hides the baby for the few days it takes her to recover from the birth. After that it’s only a matter of going away from Nurmengard with the pretense to make her accustomed again to work in the field, and instead going to Devon to leave her child to the Watkins family.

Aurelius has chosen them, thanks to the connection he’s had in the years they’ve been siding with Grindelwald. He’s been preparing for his fight with Dumbledore - and she hears almost every day the conflicting thoughts in Grindelwald's mind - that should happen this summer, at Hogwarts.

***

Eileen first notices him when she’s running, for the umpteenth time, away from home.

It’s not like she’s being abused or anything: on the contrary, she loves her family, and her family loves her. She has more freedom than most girls her age, even to choose herself if she wants a husband at all, and her dad had promised her to pay for a Mastery in Potion should she wish for it - and Merlin, does she wish.

But there are times when their prejudices become so much oppressive that she can’t bear to be surrounded by anything magic for a while. Grindelwald has been defeated a few years ago, but the anti-muggle sentiment still persists in the wizarding world - even halfbloods like her classmate Riddle seemed to be consumed by it.

She doesn’t really understand it: muggles are just poor souls who try to do the best they can. There’s nothing to hate about them: on the contrary, wizards should feel pity for them, to be condemned to live a life without magic.

That’s why she always wants to lose herself in the muggle world: she likes looking at them, going on with their life, and having no idea that there’s so much more that they will never see, and never understand. _Poor muggles,_ she always thinks.

But today’s something different: today, for the first time, he sees one of them as something more. He’s a muggle her age, she thinks, but even if he doesn’t seem to realize it, Eileen can sense magic around him, like a layer surrounding him. He doesn’t come from him, but it follows it wherever he goes.

It's that unusual detail that makes her decide to talk to him: she wants to know what that’s all about.

***

“Do you want to name him?” Aurelius asks gently where they are almost in front of the house.

Queenie, who’s already on the point of crying, feels her heart break at that question. Does she want that? More than everything in the world. But how can she claim the right to give a name to a child that she’s leaving to someone else? Her baby boy who will not be _hers_ anymore, who will grown calling someone else “mum” and “dad” instead of her and Jacob.

“No,” she says, sniffing, and Aurelius takes her hand with his. “No, I… I can’t. I’ll let the family decide a name.”

She deposits the crib with her child inside, and a letter to the Watkins family, telling them that he’s the child of a lost family member and that in a few years someone will come to take him back. _It’s only until the war’s over: after that we’ll come to take him, and me and Jacob will finally start a family._

She looks at him, her boy, and gives only a kiss: she tries with it to infuse how much she loves him and will do her best to protect him, even at risk of her own safety.

She doesn’t consciously set a protection charm, but her magic does it for her: something light, almost indiscernible, but that it helps him going one more day without eating, healing his bruises faster, feeling less the grip of the cold. A phantom of the love his mother felt for him, but that he will never feel.

“Goodbye,” she says, and with a last glance she and Aurelius return back to Nurmengard.

***

Severus joins the Death Eaters on his last year of school, a cold night of December. The ceremony leaves him with a Dark Mark and a lot of pain, but also with friends and people who respect him and make him feel one of their own.

Were someone to ask him why he joined an anti-muggle movement, since his father is a muggle, he would answer “Precisely because my father is a muggle.” Severus’ father was an alcoholic, a violent man towards him and his mother because he was intolerant of magic, and that’s how every muggle would ever react, should they know about it: with violence and anger.

(Lily’s parents didn't, but they’re the exception: they're as good as their daughter is.)

Little does he know that his grandfather, a muggle himself, was first confronted with magic by a Sniffler, a bigger-on-the-inside suitcase and a very strange wizard, and his first reaction was "Wow". In Severus’ world no muggle could ever react to magic with anything but contempt and envy, and no muggleborn would be ever treated differently from how Petunia treats Lily.

And so he chooses the wrong side, like his grandmother did, and that’s the last straw for his mother’s heart. She joins his father in the afterlife, wherever it is, and Severus feels the first (but not the last, and not the strongest) pang of regret for the path he’s chosen for himself.

He will never know the truth about his father. There will be a moment when Dumbledore, in passing, will hypnotize a connection between the two and entertain the idea to talk about it, but he will dismiss it after a few minutes of talking with Severus as a fantasy from an old man who’s still too much sentimental for his own good.

***

That’s how it goes.

The Watkins family doesn’t accept a newborn put under their root without a good reason, and they leave him in an orphanage to fend for himself. The next year, in an almost poetic justice, they all die in France, caught in the middle of a battle.

In the summer Aurelius dies too, in a confusing battle against his brother that Grindelwald, in the end, does everything he can to stop. His obscurial kills itself in the process, and Grindelwald disappears without a trace.

Queenie, twice broken from the loss of her child - who she believes died in the battle, with all the Watkins family - and her _Relì_ , returns to the other side and finally hugs Jacob and her sister, after two years of separation. And it’s only after the 1945, when Grindelwald is imprisoned in Nurmengard - once her beautiful home, now changed to become a prison - that she finally feels she can start again, even if the regret of what she’s done will remain with her for the rest of her life.

She never tells Jacob about the child they lost. They marry and have two more children, one magical and one no-maj, and she loves them with all the love she couldn’t give to her first child, a nameless boy with hair and eyes as dark as his father’s.

She never knows that, to the other end of the world, there’s a boy that calls himself Tobias Snape because no one had ever given him a name. One that’s strong, resourceful, broken, that thinks as soon as his wife talks to him about magic _why couldn’t I have had it when I was young?_ and hates how he's referring to more than magic.


End file.
